1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a smart portable lighting device.
It applies in particular, to a smart portable lighting device that is lightweight, powerful and durable, designed to be immediately operational without any maintenance even in cases of prolonged non-utilization, ready to be connected to the electric power grid or having its own electric power source in the form of rechargeable batteries, and capable of illuminating, depending on the users' requirements, large areas of diverse activities, during various operations such as security or rescue interventions (for example interventions by emergency personnel on accident sites, rescue operations for persons involved in natural disasters making all classic routine communications impossible), or for work requiring good lighting that is self-contained and constantly available for at least several hours, in case of a breakdown of the power grid or if it impossible to gain access to said power grid.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98.
In numerous circumstances, it is indispensable to provide temporary artificial lighting installations on diverse intervention sites, so as to obtain lighting for action scenes, so that the intervening personnel may be able to accomplish the tasks requiring good vision of the environment, so they can operate under the best conditions of visibility possible.
Public authorities sometimes make such equipment mandatory which must be available at any moment and be put in operation very rapidly, depending on the cataclysmal circumstances, and this even if this equipment has been stored over long periods with oftentimes non-existing maintenance during those periods.
These temporary electric lighting installations are transported to the sites of utilization, for example on light vehicles or pack animals, but it is advantageous to be able to have them easily carried by a single person with minor drudgery in cases where circumstances are such that cataclysms preclude the utilization of other means to quickly bring powerful and long-lasting light sources to disaster sites.
To meet the afore-mentioned needs, and especially on public works sites, self-contained, portable lighting installations are routinely used which use various sources of energy and consist of:                Gas lighting devices, operating with gas bottles;        Electric lighting devices consisting of conventional projectors powered by electric generators;        Electric lighting devices powered by lead batteries using discharge lamps, for example Xenon lamps.        
The major disadvantages of these lighting devices are as follows:                They are heavy and cumbersome and cannot easily be carried by a single person, so that several persons are needed for carrying a portion of this lighting device. Under these conditions its re-assembly on the site will take longer and it is not very advantageous to mobilize several persons for a single device;        Most of them consume fossil fuels in significant quantities which continue to be more and more costly and for which storage conditions become more and more strict and regulated;        They poorly support prolonged storage periods of non-utilization, so that they often require maintenance operations just when they are needed, making their availability unreliable and most of the time not instant;        Their light output is not or only slightly adjustable, thereby limiting, when in self-contained use, the possibility to prolong the lighting duration by reducing the light output;        The lighting duration and more precisely the remaining light duration is unknown or modifiable when the energy source is limited in self-containing utilization;        When the power source is self-contained and nearly exhausted, light output diminishes rapidly and uncontrollably, and can create grave situations in case of total darkness of the area while critical operations are still on-going in said area. The remaining lighting duration determined as of the moment when lighting diminishes does not allow alerting the users sufficiently early to that they can proceed with securing the area before complete extinction of lighting;        They do not offer any or only very little possibility to be connected to another power source, for example the power grid when this is available, and in any case do not offer the possibility of changing the power source instantly and automatically when the major power source becomes suddenly unavailable.        
Only the use of a number of lighting systems would minimize the risk of a sudden lack of light in the area in question and/or of having to face insufficient durations of lighting for completing the works or interventions in progress. This is perfectly conceivable on specific and planned sites, but cannot be envisaged for disaster situations where availability of several systems in a single intervention area may be impossible to provide at the scale of several hours or even several days.
Also known are lightweight self-containing lighting devices consisting of LED hand lamps for single hand use and powered by rechargeable or not rechargeable batteries providing relatively strong lighting. But these systems have limited operating capabilities due to the weight of the battery for being carried by hand Most of the disadvantages mentioned are therefore found in the state of the art described above.
Such a system is shown schematically in FIG. 1 illustrating the present state of the art and according to which the energy source consisting here of a rechargeable battery is directly connected to the light sources through voltage-to-current converters of electric energy capable of adapting the voltage/current characteristics of the rechargeable battery to the operating specificities in voltage and/or current of the light sources. But there is, in this case, no possibility of smart management of the lighting, especially with respect to the duration of the lighting.
It is known that light sources such as LED lamps have, among others, three major advantages:                Very significant light output (capable today of outputs above 100 lumen/Watt), identical to or even above those of Xenon lamps or other discharge lamps;        Low voltage operation;        Capability of modulating the luminous intensity through voltage-to-current converters of electric energy which are known as such, directly connected to the energy source, intended to deliver the voltage/current characteristics required for supplying power to the light source and appropriate for performing a task (between 0 and 100% for example), allowing to modulate this luminous intensity, which is all but impossible to obtain with discharge lamps.        
The applicant has, incidentally, developed a whole range of high energy rechargeable batteries for professional use, together with a range of distinct portable electric tools, each possessing its own operating characteristics, a system described for example in document FR-2.920.683.
Document GB 2 476 466 describes a battery management device for a portable lighting apparatus.
The battery control device described in this document:                does not feature an electronic management housing to which are connected both the battery and also one or even several light sources;        does not feature a device that is configured to establish, while the system is in operation, a main lighting phase by programming the desired lighting duration, determining a constant lighting output;        does also not allow programming a constant lighting output determining the available lighting duration.        
Overall, the purpose of the device described in this document is also to manage the end of useful life of the battery, a well-known solution. For example, in the case of selecting a lighting time where the user wants to ensure a constant light output, the battery will not necessarily be at the end of its useful life at the end of this time, even while providing the maximal output of the lamps during this period.
The device described in the GB 2 476 466 document limits itself in effect to adapting the light output of the LEDs depending on the end of the charge of the battery, in order to preserve the overall assembly. One finds oneself in the typical and familiar case of a flash light the brightness of which declines towards the end of the charge of its battery, with the user having no control over this duration. The system described in this document makes the light source communicate in this sense, integrating a smart energy conversion system, and a battery integrating also its own smart system. One is dealing here with a somewhat sophisticated flash light which will only alert the user at the end of the discharge of the battery, without the user being able to know the duration separating him from the next alarm point.
The system according to GB 2 476 466 does not feature intermediary electronic management housing capable of managing, and thus communicating to the user, the lighting duration remaining or to modulate a constant output depending on the duration desired by the user, guaranteeing him a constant brightness during this time.
Document WO-2010/057138 discloses an energy saving system comprising at least one light source powered by solar panels and/or batteries. According to this document, this system actively manages the available energy and controls the output or energy delivered to the load so as to enable said light sources and/or other devices to function efficiently and to supply the users even on days, weeks or months of weak solar luminosity.
The preferred adaptations actively manage the battery charge and actively manage the output delivered to the load, in contrast to the conventional control methods where the system is passively controlled by the load. Thus, the preferred implementations prevent the system batteries from discharging below their low operating threshold, even when operating during prolonged periods of weak sunshine, whereas the conventional methods of control let the load use more energy than is available in the storage of the system/battery and frequently results in the disconnection (shut-off) of the load and damages the battery.
On the other hand, the device described in WO-2010/057138 document proposes to manage a network of electric consumers (street lights, traffic lights, WiFi terminals, . . . ) using energy sources such as solar panels and rechargeable batteries, by managing the outputs delivered according to a predictive mechanism depending on phenomena such as ambient brightness, the seasonal day/night effects or the climatic conditions on the basis of mathematical models established according to meteorological histories.
Document WO-2010/057.138 therefore does not describe a portable lighting system, but one could consider that it features an electronic management casing featuring a smart system concerned with modulating the energy sources in order to ensure the priorities even of the minimum energy supplies to the different consumers according to a predictive model. This smart system does not seek to guarantee a constant lighting output, for example during a given length of time, because it depends on the other consumers of the network and the meteorological conditions. This system seeks instead, as does the one described in the GB 2 476 466 document, to protect the battery from overloads and over-discharges which can lead to its rapid degradation over time. This is a stationary application where the characteristics of the battery are calculated with wide safety margins in order to ensure its functioning over several years while taking basic predictive models into account.